Quite true, and yet multiple posters in this thread can’t seem to get their heads around a black Clark Kent. What do you make of that?
This is the point I have been trying to drill down to…in a world of pure imagination and fantasy why does changing the color of a particular character make things weird?
I find this particular thought experiment to be quite fascinating because it’s a personal question that I think gives some insight into how folks look at others who are different from them. In my mind, it’s all just make believe and the only thing that’s changed is the color crayon used to fill in the outlines so things never get weird. When others get angry and defensive over the color of fucking comic book character one can’t help but wonder why.
I’m sorry you feel the debate is dishonest but I’m pretty sure no one thinks you’re a white supremacist. At least I don’t if that means anything to you
I dunno. How is Superman doing these day popularity wise? I loved the Christopher Reeve movies, but I haven’t wanted to see another Superman or Batman movie for a couple of decades. I’m not saying I’m an accurate barometer, but if I can brush Superman away, it doesn’t seem impossible he could drift off into obscurity.
In the case of superheros, there’s nothing that inherently makes them one race or another.
Of course you can have a black Superman / Clark Kent.
The far more interesting and difficult question, that could make for an amazingly interesting story would be what you do about the “in world” reality.
Superman has been traditionally apolitical with no overt signs of racism.
What would you do about a black Clark Kent in the South of the 60s? Do you play it colourblind and ignore the 60s attitudes?
Or do you build part of the story around how Clark deals with racism?
Equally interesting could be a Superman story set in an America at the height of slavery.
As a separate issue - what do you do about historical fiction, period drama and dramatisations?
In a movie about the moon landing could Buzz be played by any other race than white? What would it do to the story (if anything?).
Is the actual story line more important that the social reality of the time?
How about in a movie about JFK - would the makeup of the Secret Service detail need to reflect the reality of the time? If it doesn’t is it a white washing of history or is it good because of more opportunities?
Traditionally Superman hasn’t been apolitical. He defeated the KKK.
So a black Superman actually makes more “sense” than a white one, if we want to apply logic and reason to a superhero. Your average corn-fed white guy of the 1930s (when Superman was created) was passively racist if not actively so. He sure as hell wouldn’t have cared about defeating the KKK. The KKK wouldn’t have been on his radar all that much. But a racial or ethnic minority Superman would have certainly cared.
He also beat up greedy bankers and abusive husbands.
Paragraph, sorry.
I’m really working hard to not take this to the pit. Honestly, you have to stretch pretty fucking hard to see anything of the kind in my comment. I didn’t even make any assertions or offer any opinions on the topic of race in that post, I simply characterized the circle jerk as I see it. It seems more likely that you’ve already decided that anyone who stands counter your position is inherently racist irregardless of what’s said.
In no way shape or form have I done that. If you think I have, please quote it. I’ve never denied any of our fucked up history on this. The furthest I’ve gone is saying that changing the race of certain characters is probably going to be unpopular with the masses. I’ve said (along with several other people) over and over there’s nothing inherently wrong with it…just that it won’t sell.
Miles Morales worked because it’s an alternate reality where someone other than Peter Parker becomes Spider-man. It’s great, I loved every second of it. If they’d have instead recast the Earth 616 Peter Parker as a black kid instead of picking Tom Holland, that franchise would be in quite a different place critically and economically. Place any value judgement you want on that prediction.
As a side note, they could have cast Eddie Brock in Venom with a black actor instead of Tom Hardy and it probably would have been just fine. Eddie Brock simply doesn’t have the cultural inertia that Peter Parker has. I’m making no blanket statements on right or wrong here…just saying what I think will and won’t sell. If you think that’s some veiled white supremacist rhetoric then I don’t know what to tell you…
Your camp has made it abundantly clear that no rationale or reason will ever be “convincing”. Such an argument has been characterized both as encoded racism and as some bizarre redefinition of what “art” is.
There are examples where it worked with niche/secondary characters. There are examples where it didn’t work. It’s never really been attempted with someone iconic. You can call that racism, I call that risk aversion. If the only thing you’ll accept as hard evidence is when a iconic character is race swapped in a big-budget film and that film goes on to crater financially and critically and the root cause is inarguably due to the audience rejecting the race of the character then I guess we’re wasting our time here.
Emphasis mine.
I really don’t think it does that, at all. I think that’s projection. Yes it’s all make believe. But a story is a complex thing. Adaptations of a beloved work need to accomplish a lot of things to appeal to and be satisfying for fans. There’s a point where too much adaption crosses over into essentially creating a whole new thing out of whole cloth and slapping a familiar label on it. I doubt fans of The Lawnmower Man, I, Robot or Dune books were really fulfilled by those movie adaptations, in part because the have virtually nothing in common.
Now maybe you don’t give a shit about appealing to fans of the source material, and in some cases that’s probably a totally valid strategy. I, Robot made money after all. But it’s arrogant to say that none of it matters and that everything can be changed without consequence. It’s downright insulting to point the finger at the audience when they reject a unwelcome change by saying “they didn’t get it” or “they’re just too hung up on race”.
Hollywood is very welcome to test the theory. Frankly, you and I would probably both be pleasantly surprised if a black Superman was a huge hit with mass appeal. I think they’d have to change a lot to make it coherent. I also think it’s a long shot and I think their time would be better spent creating something inclusive and new instead of recycling something. Finally, I emphatically disagree with the argument that I’m just too “white” to see the forest for the trees here.
Missed the edit window.
Emphasis mine.
Amazing that you did that un-ironically.
Not that amazing, since there’s no actual irony there.
We all appreciate your hard work.
Someone better warm up some tendies for Omni…
Sure, recent Superman movies haven’t been too great. But the character is iconic in a way that transcends individual movies or comic books or whatever. He’s, to some extent, the model that all other superheroes are based upon.
[Moderating]
Chingon, I’m not quite sure what “warm up some tendies” means. But it sounds like you’re personalizing this. Don’t.
I think the question of “What does a black Superman think about 'truth, justice, and the American way?” is a really interesting question in just about any permutation you give it.
Period piece, black Superman, black Kents, set in an all black farming community version of Smallville
Same but in a sundown town, or a mixed town
Period piece, black Superman, white Kents, in a mixed or sundown town
Modern piece, black Superman, black Kents
Modern piece, black Superman, white Kents
Modern piece, black Superman, interracial Kents
All eight of those permutations give you a different outlook for Clark Kent when he moves to Metropolis to get a newspaper job. I’m not wholly sure what the differences are, but there are tons of possibilities. I’d read those Elseworlds, or watch that movie.
If you want a black Superman, he could always just hop into his Blackanizer machine.
Do we know what the make-up of the Secret Service was at that time?
Some years back I saw a TV episode that featured, among many other things, President Richard Nixon. There was some pearl-clutching because one of the Secret Service men depicted was black. Turns out… there actually WAS a black agent on Nixon’s detail. Turns out real history isn’t as white as we have been lead to believe. Adding a black agent wasn’t “more opportunities”, it was reflecting reality.
(Which actually, for that show, is pretty strange on certain level what with the aliens and the time travel and such. And folks got upset over a black guy?)
Weird isn’t bad.
Sherlock Holmes is a White English Dude from the 1890’s. His buddy Watson is a White English Dude from the 1890’s. I just started watching a Sherlock show based in present day Japan where Sherlock is a Japanese Lady and Wato-San is her female sidekick.
It’s a hoot.
People need to just lighten up a bit and go with the flow. While there are times when a character needs to follow type, the world of fiction is a wild and wonderful place where just about anything can happen, we shouldn’t handcuff our artists because of the choices other artists made decades ago.
Growing up as a black kid who loved all the nerdy shit it was pretty rare to find any characters who looked like me. So did I just sit around and be content to always be Constable Reggie? Fuck no, I was Inspector SpaceTime goddammit! If I wanted to pretend to be Superman I didn’t feel the need to pretend I was a white guy just to fill the role. I was just Superman and the story kept moving along the way it always moved. It never occurred to me that the story needed to change just because I didn’t look like Christopher Reeve. I guess I just always figured people were more than what they look like.
So when folks tell me that Superman can’t be black without all types of caveats, exceptions and alterations it becomes painfully obvious that something else must be going on. It feels like we can’t even be equal in your imagination, like we must be different by definition else it taints and perverts your view to the point where you can no longer stay in the story. That appearance trumps content instead of vice versa.
I don’t think I’m projecting. I think I’m making a reasonable conclusion based on the evidence provided. I can imagine this, you can’t. Simple as that. This is make believe, but in your world view I can’t even pretend to be like you.
I get what you’re saying. I wonder, though, about how much you read books for societal dynamics (“none” is a fine answer).
Obviously Metropolis isn’t a real-world place. But it draws really heavily on the real world. When I watch a Superman movie, I expect a switch on the wall to toggle the lights (not to change the radio station), I expect coffee to be something that grownups drink in the morning (not something they put in lawn mowers), I expect coworkers to greet each other with “Good Morning” (not, “I love you snookums”). The changes that the authors make to society are deliberate and usually obvious, and if the authors don’t illustrate that change in some way, I expect the change not to be there.
I expect Metropolis, as a fictional American city, to be grappling with some of the same issues we focus with in our America. They grapple with crime, with wealth inequality, with sexism, with racism. If they don’t, the artist probably ought to illustrate that change in some way. (They can also go the Hamilton route, where the change ostentatiously happens with no in-narrative explanation, and that’s cool too–but there it’s a deliberate choice).
I’m all about the idea of a black Superman. That’d be awesome. But when you talk about telling this story where his skin is black and nothing else changes, I’m not sure what you mean: do you mean that Metropolis remains a fantasy American city, and has the same problems as real American cities? if so, wouldn’t Superman face racial discrimination? Or do you mean that Superman doesn’t face racial discrimination? If so, isn’t that a change to the city itself?